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"A Doctor's Declaration of Independence"

So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?

Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?

I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.

We could change the paradigm. We could as a group elect not to take any insurance, not to accept Medicare—many doctors are already taking these steps—and not to roll over time and time again.

Yes, the reason healthcare has become so expensive and the regulations so onerous is because of the involvement of third parties (government, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, etc.). These players have disrupted the patient-doctor relationship, and the situation has only become worse over the years. Healthcare in the U.S. used to be quite affordable prior to the enactment of Medicare in the 1960s and the subsequent rise of private insurers in the 70s and 80s. True competition is what is needed to bring prices down and efficiencies up, and that goes for Sweden as much as it does for the U.S. In Sweden, government control is a boondoggle for the drug and medical device companies.